Griffin Meets LOTR
by Particoloured Piano Concerto
Summary: A silly Year of the Griffin/LOTR crossover. Elda reads LOTR and decides to bring it to life using magic to cheer Olga up. But Lukin helps her, and every spell he does had a hole in it somewhere. This one opens into- you guessed it...


            "You with the second hand jacket!" barked Wermacht. "You're meant to be writing this down!"

            Lukin (who had actually bought a new jacket some time ago) hadn't been listening. Neither had the rest of the class, including the Corkoran's personally taught students, Lukin's friends. Wermacht had repeated everything so often and so loudly in previous lessons that they had all know what he was going to say before they came to this class.

            Claudia, a thin girl with large green eyes and hair that seemed to be permanently wet, was writing everything their teacher said, but without taking it in. Felim, who was tall, narrow and brown, and Ruskin, a dwarf whose red beard and hair was plaited with hundreds of bones, had been muttering a discussion on Policant's _Philosophy of Magic_, which they had both just read.

            Due to his deep, booming voice (Wermacht called him 'you with the voice', Ruskin's mutters made small objects on nearby desks vibrate. But Wermacht was picking on Lukin (who was tall and shabby) today, and was ignoring the dwarf. He also ignored Elda, who was a large golden griffin, simply because he always did, even though she took up the space of five desks and was obviously paying no attention whatsoever.

            Lukin quickly pretended to be writing as Wermacht (who taught most of their subjects, due to the Wizards University's lack of money and teachers) continued talking, pausing only to tell students to pay attention. The very poor prince, for that was what Lukin was, and his four friends were usually far more attentive, but today they were distracted by the fact that there were only five of them.

The physically impressive Olga, to whom Lukin was more attached than the others, for obvious reasons, was absent. She had fallen ill with the bad grace of those who have never been sick in their life. At the moment the was in the infirmary, barely conscious, sweating profusely, tossing, turning, and crying out intermittently as if caught in a nightmare that she couldn't wake from.

Her friends, who had never once seen Olga lose her composure, were incredibly worried by this sudden and inexplicable illness. They would have been by her bedside now if she hadn't been quarantined by Wizard Myrna, one of the few competent wizards in the University.

The lesson droned on, and as the five unusual students virtually rushed out of the classroom they knew they'd be having the rest of their classes that day with Wermacht. This fact of life was somehow harder to bear with the companion so ill.

"I think we should try to distract her from being so sick, you know, so she'll start feeling better, and get better," said Elda as they settled down to an altogether unpleasant morning tea of cold floppy toast left over from breakfast. "When I was a kit and I got sick Blade and Shona and Lydda and Don used to do all sorts of things to cheer me up- but not Kit, he was always too grumpy to do anything like that. Once I got a horrible cold which made half my feathers fall out, and then Callete caught it off me and lost more than half of hers and wouldn't go outside at all- she looked just _awful_, but we couldn't tell her that, and she didn't believe us when we said she looked fine, and then I got sicker, so Don- he was much more fun when he was younger, he's always preening for his fanclub now-"

Knowing Elda's homeward reminiscences could go on forever if unchecked, Lukin said gloomily, "She isn't even conscious. How are we supposed to make her feel better?"

Claudia sipped her coffee and said nothing; Ruskin grumbled and Felim bowed his head, but Elda refused to be discouraged. She said, orange eyes gleaming, "We can try to wake her up, then!"

Felim said, "With magic?" The group's spells had a way of working, but haphazardly and unconventionally. That two of them had jinxes on them didn't help.

Elda thought for a moment. "Maybe. But not the way you think. I'll meet you outside the infirmary!" She rushed off in a bright golden blur, wisely leaving her toast behind.


End file.
